A Southport Euro-MP has described as "long overdue" speculation that the government will announce a tax on plastic carrier bags this month in a bid to reduce litter and protect the local environment.

Chris Davies says that people in Southport use an average of 134 plastic bags a year, and that a tax similar to that already in place in Ireland would help to tidy up local streets and reduce pollution.

Back in March, the Irish government forced supermarkets and other shops to start charging customers around 9p for each new plastic bag. Since then, people have started re-using old bags and producers have been encouraged to start developing biodegradable alternatives.

"One of the biggest supermarket chains in Ireland says that the number of plastic bags that it distributes has already fallen by as much as 95%," explained the Liberal Democrat MEP.

"Irish politicians have been telling me that the tax has been the most successful initiative in reducing litter." He added, "results have been dramatic, and plastic bags no longer blight the Irish countryside."

British shoppers currently use around 8 billion plastic bags every year. The majority of the bags, which are hazardous to produce, end up in landfill sites where they can take as long as 1,000 years to decompose.

Moves have been taken to clamp down on plastic bag use in countries such as India and Taiwan, and the bags have been banned altogether in Bangladesh, where they were shown to have caused huge floods by blocking up the drainage system.

And environmentalists say that plastic bags can also be dangerous to animals. They can be ingested by cows, which then choke or starve to death, and turtles often mistake them for jellyfish.